Free Daily Podcast Summary
The NewCrits Podcast: Daily Summaries Delivered
by with Ajay Kurian
This is what critical care for the arts sounds like. Meaningful conversations on creative practice and the conditions shaping artistic life today. Tune in on the second Thursday of every month for SPENT with Ajay Kurian, our series on creative burnout and breakthrough, and on the fourth Thursday for The Forum, our recorded artist talks. Subscribe today at newcrits.substack.com or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also join our community for transcripts and archival access via the Substack app or watch on YouTube. newcrits.substack.com
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- May 6, 20261h 2m
The Forum 20 | Kamrooz Aram: Painting on the Edge of Ornament and Abstraction
He works through form, perception, and the politics of display — Kamrooz Aram on ornament, abstraction, and the unstable ground of how we see.Kamrooz Aram moves between painting, sculpture, and collage, using material, structure, and exhibition design to question how images are read and how histories are constructed. His work often begins in the studio, through process and formal decision-making, and expands outward into larger systems of meaning: how value is assigned, how objects are categorized, and how cultural narratives are embedded within visual form. Across recent exhibitions, he continues to return to questions of ornament, modernism, and the conditions that shape perception without resolving them into fixed positions.He explains:* How openness, curiosity, and “young artist energy” remain essential to sustaining a long-term practice.* Why restraint, stepping away, and not overworking are as critical as mark-making in the studio.* What it means to work within a structure or “mode,” where improvisation can emerge without forcing novelty.* How ornament and abstraction are historically entangled, and why their separation reflects biased art histories.* Why viewers project cultural assumptions onto form, and how ideas of “the decorative” or “the exotic” are constructed.* How value shifts depending on context, authorship, and belief, from museum objects to replicas and everyday materials.* Why art can create moments of transcendence through form, rather than through narrative alone. Welcome + Returning to the Studio Reclaiming “Young Artist Energy” The Nonlinear Life of a Painting Disruption, Destruction, and Letting the Work Shift Sculpture as an Extension of Painting Ornament, Abstraction, and Historical Bias Time, Fading, and Letting Go of Control Authenticity, Replication, and Constructed ValueWatch the conversationView the full episode on YouTube.Follow KamroozWeb: https://kamroozaram.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kamroozegar/Kamrooz Aram (b. 1978) has built his practice on dismantling the divide between ornament and fine art, renegotiating the art historical hierarchies that privilege Western forms of abstraction above others. His paintings and sculptures do not simply cross categories; they probe the structures that enforce them. Born in Shiraz, Iran, Aram emigrated to the United States in the 1980s, where he found himself forced to come to terms with a multitude of identities imposed upon him. These experiences left a lasting mark. Categories, he discovered, do not merely describe identity—they invent it. This recognition drives his work, which asserts that non-Western ornamental traditions carry the same intellectual weight and conceptual rigor Western art history has long reserved for itself.About The ForumThe Forum is NewCrits’ ongoing public talk series, presented in partnership with WSA/WSBS. Talks take place live every second Tuesday at WSA. Join us for our next conversation here.Explore NewCrits’ offerings, including crits, courses, and mentorship programs at www.newcrits.studio.—Full Transcript Get full access to NewCrits Substack at newcrits.substack.com/subscribe
- Apr 10, 202638 min
The Forum 19 | Rachel Rose: Psychic States, Motherhood, and the Moving Image
She works through feeling, perception, and narrative — Rachel Rose on interior weather, unstable perspectives, and art as a way to process what cannot be easily named.Rachel Rose moves between film, installation, and painting, using sound, light, and narrative structure to explore how experience is shaped from the inside out. Her work often begins with an emotional register and expands into systems of history, perception, and embodiment. In her recent film The Last Day, she turns inward, tracing the psychological and biological complexities of motherhood, identity, and crisis without resolving them into clear frameworks.She explains:* How personal feeling becomes a starting point for building larger perceptual and narrative systems.* Why motherhood, postpartum depression, and identity loss resist clean cultural narratives.* How sound and light can destabilize reality and reorient one’s relationship to the world.* What it means to make work that stays with ambiguity rather than resolving into message.* How falling in love with characters becomes a method for discovering structure, rather than imposing it.* Why occupying unlikeable or unstable perspectives creates more honest and generative work.* How art can act as a container for experiences that are culturally unspoken or difficult to locate. Welcome + Intro The Last Day and the Mrs. Dalloway Transposition Motherhood, Identity, and the Book Read Twice Lake Valley, Saturn Return, and the Invention of Childhood Excerpt: Lake Valley (2016) Art School, Painting, and the Crisis of Meaning Editing as Voice, the First Video, and Finding the Medium Transcendent Experiences and the Power of ArtWatch the conversationView the full episode on YouTube.Follow RachelWeb: https://gladstonegallery.com/exhibit/rachel-rose-the-rest/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/worrrld/Rachel Rose (b. 1986) lives and works in New York. The work of Rachel Rose explores how our changing relationship to landscape has shaped storytelling and belief systems. Rose’s films draw from and contribute to the long history of cinematic innovation; whether investigating cryogenics, the American Revolutionary War, or an astronaut’s space walk, Rose directs our attention to sites and histories in which the sublime and the everyday blur. She translates this in her paintings, sculptures and drawings, which materially reverberate with one another, connecting the immediate to deep time. Recent solo exhibitions include: Science Gallery, London, UK (2024); GL STRAND, Copenhagen (2023); SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe (2023); CC Strombeek, Strombeek (2022); Pond Society, Shanghai (2020); Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2020); Fridericianum, Kassel (2019); LUMA Foundation, Arles (2019); Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia (2018); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2018); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz (2017); Museu Serralves, Porto (2016); The Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2016); The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2015); Serpentine Gallery, London (2015); Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2015). Recent group exhibitions include: Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2024); ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Denmark (2023); Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2023); Centre d’Art Contemporain Geneva, Geneva (2023); 3rd Jeju Biennale (2022); 9th Beijing Biennale (2022); The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2022); Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis (2022); Schinkel Pavilion, Berlin (2021); Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, US (2021); Artspace, Sydney (2021); Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2021); A Tale of A Tub, Tlön Projects, Rotterdam (2021); Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2020); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); Carnegie International, 57th Edition, Pittsburgh (2018); 57th Venice Biennale (2017); 32nd São Paudalo Biennial (2016); Hayward Gallery, London (2016); Okayama Art Summit, Japan (2016). She is the recipient of the Future Fields Award and the Frieze Artist Award.About The ForumThe Forum is NewCrits’ ongoing public talk series, presented in partnership with WSA/WSBS. Talks take place live every second Tuesday at WSA. Join us for our next conversation here.Explore NewCrits’ offerings, including crits, courses, and mentorship programs at www.newcrits.studio.—Full TranscriptAjay Kurian: Can you tell us a little bit about The Last Day?Rachel Rose: It’s a film that I wrote. Loosely based on Vir
- Mar 5, 202659 min
The Forum 18 | Reginald Sylvester II: Discipline as Devotion
Reginald Sylvester II approaches painting as a structure of discipline. What begins in daily rituals—routine, repetition, and care—extends into a larger philosophy about belief, responsibility, and endurance. Practice, for him, is not separate from life. It is shaped by it.Fatherhood, spiritual inquiry, and the demands of time become part of the architecture of the studio. Rather than protecting art from those pressures, Sylvester allows them to recalibrate how the work unfolds. The result is a practice grounded less in spectacle and more in sustained commitment.Abstraction emerges through this framework as an act of faith. To begin a painting without knowing its final form is to trust that meaning will surface through repetition and attention. At a certain moment, that commitment required stepping away from exhibition altogether, allowing the work to evolve privately before returning to public view.Rather than presenting artistic growth as clarity or mastery, Sylvester describes a practice built through persistence, where rigor, vulnerability, and belief remain inseparable.He explains:• Why daily rituals and discipline are foundational to sustaining a studio practice.• How fatherhood reshaped his relationship to time, responsibility, and ambition.• Why abstraction functions as an act of faith rather than a stylistic choice.• What it meant to withdraw from the exhibition to deepen the work in private.• How travel and research expanded the historical resonance of the work.Timestamps Ritual and the Structure of Practice Fatherhood and Responsibility Abstraction and Faith Stepping Away from Exhibition Discipline and Repetition Cutting into Surface: The Gates Travel, History, and Material Memory Persistence and Staying in the WorkWatch the conversationView the full episode on YouTube.Follow ReginaldInstagram: @reginaldsylvester2Follow Maximillian WilliamWeb: https://www.maximillianwilliam.comInstagram: @maximillian_williamReginald Sylvester II (b. Jacksonville, NC, USA, 1987; lives and works in Jersey City, NJ) creates large-scale paintings and sculptures that trace the generative threshold between the two mediums. Working predominantly in abstraction, he expands the language of his painting practice by incorporating materials such as rubber, tarp, aluminium and steel. His singular approach lends his paintings a sculptural presence and imbues his sculptures with a painter’s sensibility. While grounded in traditional painting techniques, Sylvester II ventures beyond the conventions of stretched canvas, working on surfaces that both absorb and reject paint. His layered, often multi-partite works investigate the language of his chosen mediums: stretcher bars are left exposed, becoming part of his compositions, while oxidised and patinated metal surfaces evoke the histories of gestural painting. Sylvester II also transcends the surface, creating monumental sculptures that reference forms observed through painting and from his environment. The artist is drawn to materials that relate to his personal history, spirituality, or broader societal narratives. In his approach to assemblage, Sylvester II appropriates byproducts of his making process, physically attaching studio debris to works to enrich their tactile quality and textural narrative.About The ForumThe Forum is NewCrits’ ongoing public talk series, presented in partnership with WSA/WSBS. Talks take place live every second Tuesday at WSA. Join us for our next conversation here.Explore NewCrits’ offerings, including crits, courses, and mentorship programs at www.newcrits.studio.—Full TranscriptAjay Kurian: I’m gonna start off with the big questions, things that are really important to people. You are 37 years old. What the fuck is your skincare routine man?Reginald Sylvester ll: 39.Ajay Kurian: That’s insane.Reginald Sylvester ll: Knocking on 40, bro.Ajay Kurian: Oh my God.Reginald Sylvester ll: Yeah, man. Cold water and shots out to mom Dukes.Ajay Kurian: That’s really Mom Dukes and cold water. I remember this very clearly when Pharrell was asked, he said cold water too.Reginald Sylvester ll: He’s right. Closes up your pores, but, yeah
- Jan 9, 202653 min
The Forum 17 | Ebony L. Haynes: The Terms Of Autonomy
When David Zwirner approached Ebony L. Haynes, the conversation didn’t begin with vision statements or prestige. It began with reality: exhaustion, uncertainty, and the question of whether staying in the art world was even possible. What followed was recalibration. If she was going to continue, it had to be on terms that reflected how she actually works—through care, risk, and sustained presence. That recalibration became 52 Walker.Drawing from her time at Martos Gallery and its project space Shoot the Lobster, Haynes speaks candidly about what it means to build exhibitions from the ground up: buying furniture on credit cards, drilling into gallery floors, maintaining impossible works by hand, and staying late because the work deserves it. For her, autonomy is not branding or independence for its own sake. It is the ability to stay present with artists, to hold risk without spectacle, and to let rigor coexist with joy.Rather than framing curatorial work as management or authorship, Haynes describes it as a practice shaped by trust, repetition, and care—one that resists burnout not by slowing ambition, but by rooting it in pleasure, responsibility, and belief.She explains:* How Foxy Production taught her to do every job herself, and why learning the whole system changed how she values labor.* Why belief in the work often comes before money, and what it costs to act on that belief anyway.* How maintenance, repetition, and care are not secondary tasks but central to exhibition-making.* What quarantine, racial reckoning, and institutional fatigue revealed about her limits—and her resolve.* How 52 Walker emerged not from a master plan, but from presence, honesty, and the willingness to say, “I have this idea.”Timestamps First Encounter and the Permission to Care Foxy Production and Learning by Doing Installation as Commitment Belief, Debt, and the Couch Maintenance, Repetition, and Joy Quarantine, Burnout, and Almost Leaving Martos Gallery and the Small Fish Problem Shoot the Lobster and Experimental Freedom 52 Walker and Building a Program Artists, Power, and Staying in the WorkWatch the conversationView the full episode on YouTube.Follow EbonyInstagram: @ebotronFollow 52 WalkerWeb: https://www.52walker.comInstagram: @52walkerWriter, curator, and phenom Ebony L. Haynes is on a mission to reconfigure the art world. Working her way up from her first New York City internship at contemporary gallery Foxy Production (then based in Chelsea), the Canadian-born Haynes would eventually become the director of Marts Gallery and its project space Shoot the Lobster. In early 2020, Haynes was approached by David Zwirner for a sales director position. She countered with a pitch for an exhibition model resembling a kunsthalle, wherein exhibitions would last 3 months and allow for visitors to spend more time truly considering the art before them. That idea led to the October 2021 opening of 52 Walker, David Zwirner Gallery's TriBeCa location, with Haynes at the helm as director. Unlike traditional commercial galleries, 52 Walker does not represent artists, and is instead dedicated to curating programming at a pace similar to that of a museum — giving artists more opportunity to challenge themselves and experiment freely. The recruitment of an all-Black staff at 52 Walker garnered disproportionate attention, but her two-pronged approach to catalyzing change in the art world is more far-sighted than mere identity politics. In challenging the ever-shrinking attention spans of a cultural milieu that increasingly consumes art through social media, Haynes aims to empower artists to take risks and dig deeper in their work.About The ForumThe Forum is NewCrits’ ongoing public talk series, presented in partnership with WSA/WSBS. Talks take place live every second Tuesday at WSA. Join us for our next conversation here. Explore NewCrits’ offerings, including crits, courses, and mentorship programs at www.newcrits.studio.Full TranscriptAjay Kurian: What does it feel like to watch this right now?Ebony L. Haynes: You know, I haven’t watched this in a while. It stands so clear in my mind. The first time I experienced this artwork of perfection…Ajay Kurian: This was what I read and gathered was the first art experience where you wer
- Dec 17, 202553 min
The Forum 16 | Banks Violette: Inside the Machinery of Ruin
He built a career on dark stages, scorched metal, and fragile narratives. Banks Violette looks back at the neo-goth label, the toll of self-destruction, and what it means to walk away from the art world and return on his own terms.Working between sculpture, installation, and sound, Violette treats subcultures, violence, and fandom as unstable stories rather than fixed identities. From Slayer panic and satanic scare headlines to burned stages and Jägermeister firepieces, his work tracks how trauma gets turned into image, how labor disappears behind polished objects, and how an artist survives a system that rewards collapse as much as rigor.He explains:* Why “neo goth” was a convenient label that flattened a generation of young artists and obscured the real story of illness, addiction, and burnout.* How murder cases, satanic panic, and The Sorrows of Young Werther reveal a long history of fiction being blamed for real-world violence.* What it means to make work about calamity and Weegee’s photographs without treating trauma as raw material or spectacle.* How class, fabrication, and hidden labor structure the work, from doing everything by hand in Brooklyn to orchestrating 14 chandeliers for Celine across the globe.* Why drugs once felt like the only rational way to survive a tiny career window, and what it took to trade that pace for a decade of near silence, family, and fishing.* How fan-level enthusiasm for Void, Smithson, and Judd can coexist with critical rigor, and why reentering the conversation matters if art is to function as a real dialogue. Welcome and the Weight of First Impressions The Blowtorch Narrative Noise, Sunn O))), and the Gravity of Sound Polke, Richter, Danto, Judd When Stories Justify Violence The Accomplice Problem: Art, Trauma, and Ouija Invisible Labor, Class, and Who Really Makes the Work Drugs as a Work Tool and the Decision to Disappear A Decade Offstage and What It Means to Come BackFollow Banks:Web: https://ropac.net/artists/85-banks-violette/#Read: https://vonammon.bigcartel.com/product/banks-violette-no-title-gas-station-black-versionInstagram: @banks_violette_616Full TranscriptAjay Kurian: How are you feeling?Banks Violette: I feel like I’m catching up on sleep still at age 52. All the sleep that I missed in my twenties and thirties, I still feel like I’m trying to balance the books.Ajay Kurian: That’s fair. You know, there’s a camel theory of sleep that you can kind of keep it and grow it in a hump, and deposit it when you need it.Banks Violette: I have no idea what you’re talking about, but it sounds absolutely accurate.Ajay Kurian: This was the project that I really did foresee, and this was the moment that the press was largely calling a neo goth moment. There were a handful of artists at that time that were really maybe engaged in a neo-goth visual culture. But I wonder, did it feel like the right way to talk about your work at the time?Banks Violette: No. It felt like a convenient way of talking about the work because it was a way to organize a group of disparate artists and make them legible in a way that was easy for people to encounter. Ideas that were potentially easy to dismiss unless there was some kind of lens attached to it. Whether or not I ever felt like I shared a lot of commonalities with the artists that I was grouped with — not necessarily.Ajay Kurian: Of that sort of generation, were there artists that you felt like were your peers or fellow travelers?Banks Violette: It was always presented as if there was much more closeness, or similarity in our practices, when there wasn’t necessarily in actuality.So the person I can point to that I think I had the most in common with when I was working actively, was probably somebody like Gardar. He had a preoccupation with a specific period in art history, a specific kind of discursive lens that he was attaching to things, and a certain kind of political bent. I think that there were a lot of ways that we dovetailed, but then there’s a lot of ways that we were totally different.Th
- Nov 7, 202554 min
The Forum 15 | Eric N. Mack: On Tender Assembly and the Politics of Display
He builds with fabric, scaffolding, and light — Eric N. Mack on tenderness as structure and the unseen labor that makes art visible.Eric N. Mack works between painting, installation, and fashion, reimagining how material, care, and collaboration shape contemporary image-making. His large-scale assemblages drape and lean, collapsing distinctions between surface and structure, styling and architecture, autonomy and support. His practice reveals how beauty, fragility, and display coexist within shared spaces of labor and care.He explains:* How gestures of rupture, cutting, and collage become ways to think through care, not violence.* Why stylists, curators, and unseen collaborators form the hidden architectures of art.* How fabric behaves as both image and body — draped, suspended, and alive to air and time.* What scaffolding, transparency, and light teach about the precarity of presence.* How tenderness and structure coexist as the real politics of display.* Why every act of making is also an act of attention — a choreography of support between maker, viewer, and space. Welcome + Intro Rupture, Reflection, and the Studio as World Grace Jones and the Clarified Aesthetic The Unseen Hand and the Architect of the Image Collaboration, Care, and the Space of Display Fabric, Fragrance, and the Politics of Form Craft, Styling, and the Education of Looking Art School, Value, and the Work of Belief Draping Architecture and Breathing Structures Fragility, Care, and the Social Life of ObjectsWatch the conversationView the full episode on YouTube.Follow RaulFollow Eric:Web: https://www.artsandletters.org/exhibitions?slug=eric-n-mackInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ernatmack/?hl=enEric N. Mack (b. 1987, Columbia, MD) is a painter who radically reconsiders the medium’s traditional conventions. By utilizing found materials, Mack creates richly textured compositions that investigate painting in an expanded field and formal concerns of the practice.In 2025, Mack presented a one-person exhibition and site-specific installation at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, as well as a solo exhibition of new works at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York.Mack attended The Cooper Union, NY (BFA) and Yale University, CT (MFA) and is the recipient of prestigious awards and residencies including the Chinati Foundation’s Artists in Residence Program (2023); the Rome Prize (2021-2022); the inaugural BALTIC Artists’ Award (2017); the Rauschenberg Residency on Captiva Island (2017); the Delfina Foundation Residency (2017) and the Studio Museum in Harlem Residency (2014-2015).One-person exhibitions include Eric N. Mack, Paula Cooper Gallery (2023); Scampolo!, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin (2022); Lemme walk across the room, Brooklyn Museum, NY (2019); NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, FL (2021); and In austerity, stripped from its support and worn as a sarong, The Power Station, Dallas, TX (2019). Major group exhibitions include Chronorama Redux, Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2023); Whitney Biennial 2019, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; and Greater New York, MoMA PS1, NY (2015). Work by Mack is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Brooklyn Museum; the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; and the Montreal Museum of Fine Art. Mack lives and works in New York.About The ForumThe Forum is NewCrits’ ongoing public talk series, presented in partnership with WSA/WSBS. Talks take place live every second Tuesday at WSA. Join us for our next conversation here.Explore NewCrits’ offerings, including crits, courses, and mentorship programs at www.newcrits.studio.—Full TranscriptAjay Kurian: When you’re putting together a show, I know you’ve talked about art being present for the world’s brutalities, but how do you conjugate that or stay present in the work with that? It’s not even saying that you have to, because it’s not your responsibility to do so. It’s more so, I see glimmers and I see the way that you think about how things come together and how they kind of fall apart.Eric N. Mack: Yeah. I have a lot of epiphanies that sit in the studio, that come from the studio that end up allowing me to think about the external world from the happenstances in the studio, and from coordinated or measured gestures of rupture. And those ruptures could have implications of or sit alongside what folks could regard as kind o
- Oct 10, 20251h 2m
The Forum 14 | Raúl de Nieves: Saints, Stained Glass, and the Work of Belief
He builds worlds from devotion, labor, and light. Raúl de Nieves on myth, death, and the joy of transformation.Raúl de Nieves is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans sculpture, performance, stained glass, and music. His work merges ancestral craft with queer exuberance, creating ecstatic spaces where life, death, and rebirth coexist. Known for his intricate beaded sculptures and radiant installations, de Nieves transforms discarded materials into devotional objects that question permanence, value, and faith.He reflects on:* Why failure and fear are essential teachers* How myth, labor, and ritual shape his understanding of transformation* The link between spirituality and psychedelia in his creative process* The politics of beauty, excess, and craft* How performance and collaboration sustain his practice* The tension between art and commerce—and what it means to say yes* Why joy, respect, and self-love remain his most radical tools Welcome + Intro The Origin of “St. George and the Dragon” Death, Culture, and Safety Excess, Labor, and the Ephemeral The Whitney Window The Carousel and the Brand Pact with the Devil Celebration and Decay Belief and Legacy Joy, Respect, and The Smashing PumpkinsWatch the conversationView the full episode on YouTube.Follow Raulhttps://companygallery.us/artists/raul-de-nieves@noraulsRaúl de Nieves is a multimedia artist, performer, and musician whose wide-ranging practice investigates notions of beauty and transformation. De Nieves’ visual symbolism draws on both classical Catholic and Mexican vernacular motifs to create his own unique mythology. Through processes of accumulation and adornment, the artist transforms readily available materials into spectacular objects, which he then integrates into immersive narrative environments.Recent solo institutional exhibitions include In Light of Innocence at Pioneer Works, Redhook, NY (2025), and imagine you are here, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD (2023); A Window to the See, a Spirit Star Chiming in the Wind of Wonder…, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA (2023); The Treasure House of Memory, ICA Boston, Boston, MA (2021); Eternal Return & the Obsidian Heart, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Miami, FL (2021); and Reemerge the Zero Begins Your Life, Eternal is Your Light, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA (2020). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions including those at Prospect New Orleans, Hauser & Wirth, The Highline, MoMA PS1, the 2017 Whitney Biennial, K11 Foundation, Documenta 14, Performa 13, ICA Philadelphia, The Watermill Center, The Kitchen, Artist’s Space, and numerous other venues. His work is included in public collections at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. De Nieves was born in 1983, in Michoacán, Mexico, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.About The ForumThe Forum is NewCrits’ ongoing public talk series, presented in partnership with WSA/WSBS. Talks take place live every second Tuesday at WSA. Join us for our next conversation here.Explore NewCrits’ offerings, including crits, courses, and mentorship programs at www.newcrits.studio.—Full TranscriptAjay Kurian: Hi everybody, thank you all for being here. Welcome to our NewCrits Talk with Raúl de Nieves! I’m gonna give you some background as to what NewCrits is, I’m gonna give you a little introduction to Raúl, and then we’re gonna get into the conversation.NewCrits is a global platform rooted in aesthetic education. We’re committed to fostering critical care, rigorous inquiry, and artist-to-artist dialogue. We offer mentorship and courses that challenge the assumptions of traditional art institutions while honoring the intensity of their best methods. We have crits, but we don’t think about crits as a way to tear you down to build you up. That’s trauma we don’t need anymore. Our offerings are designed for artists at any stage, especially those seeking meaningful critique, rooted in trust, discernment, and deep attention. These talks are an instantiation of that.The way that I think about art will be on display. This kind of conversation is the kind of conversations that we have in crits. It’s one where we’re building together.Now let’s get to the main event, which is Raúl here.Raúl de Nieves
- Aug 1, 20251h 0m
The Forum 13 | Tracing Absence and the Lives We Inherit
She builds archives, conjures futures, and questions everything — Tamika Abaka-Wood on ritual, refusal, and the joy of cultural strategy. Tamika Abaka-Wood is a cultural anthropologist, conceptual strategist, and artist whose practice moves between community building, archival work, and spiritual inquiry. She’s the creator of Dial-An-Ancestor, an ongoing project that collects voice notes as offerings to the past, present, and future. Her work resists categorization, merging care and critique, and often asks: what are we remembering, and who are we remembering for?She explains:* Why she’s more interested in frameworks than mediums* How Dial-An-Ancestor creates a space for grief, communion, and speculative healing* The tension between facilitation and authorship in creative work* What it means to build archives that feel alive—not extractive* How refusal and withholding can be generative tools* Why she resists the singular identity of “artist,” and what she embraces instead* The ethics of visibility, looking, and representation in public programming* How joy and mischief shape her strategies for imagining otherwise Welcome + Intro Meet Tamika: cultural strategist, connector, world-builder Refusing the artist title, reshaping the role Strategy as creation Dial-An-Ancestor: calling in future histories Branding is not world-building Building intimacy into the infrastructure Refusal is not a pause, it’s a position Grief, play, and spiritual maintenance How to get involved with NewCritsWatch the conversationView the full episode on YouTube.Follow Tamikahttps://tamikaabakawood.com/https://www.instagram.com/tamikaka/?hl=enLearn more about Dial-An-Ancestorhttps://dial-an-ancestor.com/About The ForumThe Forum is NewCrits’ ongoing public talk series, presented in partnership with WSA/WSBS. Talks take place live every second Tuesday at WSA. Join us for our next conversation here.Explore NewCrits’ offerings, including crits, courses, and mentorship programs at www.newcrits.studio._Full TranscriptAjay Kurian: Hi everybody. Welcome to the July NewCrits Talk and Summer Party. Thank you all for coming!I met Tamika through my partner Jasmine, who's here tonight. From day one she was electric, a mile a minute, excited about anyone's excitement, game for anyone's game, a facilitator par excellence. Whatever you supplied, she'd give back threefold with tangents, detours, serious things and fun things, codified and color-coded. Tamika wants to help. She wants people to see their ideas through, and to excite them to build the worlds they're making and to believe in the possibility of a different tomorrow without blinders on. She's not deaf to misery or darkness, but somehow she manages to channel her best energies to maintain a joyful persistence.It's only recently that Tamika has felt comfortable calling herself an artist, and she probably wants to chime in right now and question the importance of the name. Anyways, she has self-identified as a cultural anthropologist and I think that's definitely true. Her ongoing project, Dial-An-Ancestor, is a beautiful testament to this where she gathers future histories into a building archive.But her work as a kind of conceptual strategist is also its own form of cultural anthropology. And I'm interested in people who are creating in multiple ways in multiple worlds. But really I insist on the term artist, not because everyone needs to be an artist, but because I think it allows her to momentarily assume the role of head creative and not facilitator.She's not alone, of course, but sometimes when you're in an ensemble, it's time for your solo. The group steps back and lets you play because what you have is special and singular, and the group knows you'll come back. But for that moment, it's about you, and this is a chance for that to happen. This is Tamika's world, and tonight we're all in it together.Please help me welcome Tamika Abaka-Wood.Tamika Abaka-Wood: That was so special, thank you. I feel so shy, I really do. That was beautiful.Ajay Kurian: Of course.Tamika Abaka-Wood: Thanks for having me here. It is still surreal.Ajay Kurian: What's surreal about it?Tamika Abaka-Wood: What is surreal about i
About The NewCrits Podcast
This is what critical care for the arts sounds like. Meaningful conversations on creative practice and the conditions shaping artistic life today. Tune in on the second Thursday of every month for SPENT with Ajay Kurian, our series on creative burnout and breakthrough, and on the fourth Thursday for The Forum, our recorded artist talks. Subscribe today at newcrits.substack.com or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also join our community for transcripts and archival access via the Substack app or watch on YouTube. newcrits.substack.com
Customized Recaps
AI-powered recaps with compact key takeaways, quotes, and insights.
Straight to Your Inbox
Get key takeaways from The NewCrits Podcast in a 5-minute read.
Save Hours Every Week
Stay current on your favorite podcasts without falling behind.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Podzilla's The NewCrits Podcast daily summary?
It's a free AI-powered email that summarizes new episodes of The NewCrits Podcast as soon as they're published. You get the key takeaways, notable quotes, and links & mentions — all in a quick read.
How does the The NewCrits Podcast podcast summary work?
When a new episode drops, our AI transcribes and analyzes it, then generates a personalized summary tailored to your interests and profession. It's delivered to your inbox every morning.
Is this an official The NewCrits Podcast product?
No. Podzilla is an independent service that summarizes publicly available podcast content. We're not affiliated with or endorsed by with Ajay Kurian.
Can I get summaries of other podcasts too?
Absolutely! The free plan covers up to 3 podcasts. Upgrade to Pro for 15, or Premium for 50. Browse our full catalog at /podcasts.
How often does The NewCrits Podcast release new episodes?
The NewCrits Podcast publishes monthly. Our AI generates a summary within hours of each new episode.
What topics does The NewCrits Podcast cover?
The NewCrits Podcast covers topics including Arts, Visual Arts. Our AI identifies the specific themes in each episode and highlights what matters most to you.
Start getting The NewCrits Podcast summaries tomorrow morning.
Free forever for up to 3 podcasts. No credit card required.
Free forever for up to 3 podcasts. No credit card required.